PlanetJune Craft Blog

One of my crazy habits idiosyncracies is that I hate to throw anything away. As a result, I have a box full of rejected crochet pieces: the prototypes that didn’t work out; the spare pieces I made to take photographs for patterns. The box is now full to overflowing (and has been for a long time!), and I’ve sometimes wondered if I’m being stupid by keeping these useless pieces.

But, are they really useless? No, they are not! Allow me to present the case as to why I am actually very smart for keeping all these random bits:

Exhibit 1: Photo Props. When I needed to take a photo for my stitch markers, I just delved into the box to find some photogenic pieces to clip the markers to for my photo:

The pieces in this photo are actually (clockwise from top left): a rejected flower design from my African Violet pattern; a snout from a prototype pig that never made the cut; and a spare section of shell from my Sea Turtle!

Exhibit 3: Emergency Yarn. I can’t believe this has happened to me twice now: a couple of weeks ago, I ran out of black yarn with one round to go on the final leg of my Farmyard Pigs, and yesterday I ran out of white yarn with one round to go on another new design..! The black yarn was old and a new skein probably wouldn’t have matched, and the white yarn was out of stock when I went to buy a new skein… What’s a girl to do?!

Luckily, in both cases, after a momentary panic, I thought to search through the magic box for any pieces made from those same yarns. And there I found a rejected Boston Terrier ear that was made from the right black yarn, and a partial Beagle body that contained the right white yarn – a minute of frogging and I had salvaged more than enough yarn to finish both my amigurumi 🙂

The defence rests – one more crazy perfectly sensible habit justified! The box of bits is staying in my craft room – I wonder what it’ll come in handy for next time…

Stacey Trocksaid

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Rosesaid

Thanks for the comments! I’m especially happy to notice some new commenters popping up – welcome to my blog and thanks for saying hello! I appreciate every comment and I’m looking forward to checking out your blogs too when time permits 🙂

Re: the Franken-ami – I was thinking the same thing too, but I just can’t bring myself to do it! I like neatness and symmetry too much. Although I have to admit that the disembodied heads in the box are a little creepy too!

Re: cat toys – yes, I forgot to mention that use in the post! I have added catnip to one of the ball-shaped pieces and given it to Maui. He’s so cute – he likes to carry it around in his mouth. I have to be careful that he doesn’t associate non-catnipped yarn with toys though, or I’ll start losing amigurumi pieces all over the place! A couple of times I’ve left a partially-finished piece upstairs in my office/craft room overnight, and come down in the morning to find that my work has mysteriously migrated downstairs during the night 😉

puglettesaid

I totally save my unused pieces too! I was just thinking the other day that I might make a crazy Franken-gurumi made up of all of them together, but now I might just keep them around for future use of all your good tips.

Taking note…never throw away tiny crocheted animal parts! And you should see my swatch pile! I keep all those too, but not actually in one giant box, I put them in little folders with the patterns they went with. I love the box you keep your crocheted bits in. 🙂

Also, thank you for sharing the tips what to do with them. I have a ridiciously high amount of crocheted flowers in the box. When I’m in a rush to gift wrap something I just attach some of the flowers to the ribbon

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